The Maid of Sker. Blackmore Richard Doddridge

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СКАЧАТЬ for the back of the Tuskar dries at half-ebb, and a wonderful ridge stops the run of the tide, not only for weeds but for fish as well. Here with my anchor down, I slept, as only a virtuous man can sleep.

      In the grey of the morning, I was up, ere the waning moon was done with, and found the very thing to suit me going on delightfully. The heavy dew of autumn, rising from the land by perspiration, spread a cloud along the shore. A little mist was also crawling on the water here and there; and having slept with a watch-coat and tarpaulin over me, I shook myself up, without an ache, and like a good bee at the gate of the hive, was brisk for making honey.

      Hence I pulled away from land, with the heavy boat towing the light one, and even Sandy Macraw unable to lay his gimlet eye on me. And thus I rowed, until quite certain of being over three miles from land. Then with the broad sun rising nobly, and for a moment bowing, till the white fog opened avenues, I spread upon my pole a shirt which mother Jones had washed for me. It was the time when Sandy Macraw was bound to be up to his business; and I had always made a point of seeing that he did it. To have a low fellow of itchy character, and no royal breed about him, thrust by a feeble and reckless government into the berth that by nature was mine, and to find him not content with this, but even in his hours of duty poaching, both day and night, after my fish; and when I desired to argue with him, holding his tongue to irritate me, – satisfaction there could be none for it; the only alleviation left me was to rout up this man right early, and allow him no chance of napping.

      Therefore, I challenged him with my shirt, thus early in the morning, because he was bound to be watching the world, if he acted up to his nasty business, such as no seaman would deign to; and after a quarter of an hour perhaps, very likely it was his wife that answered. At any rate there was a signal up, and through my spy-glass I saw that people wanted to launch a boat, but failed. Therefore I made a great waving of shirt, as much as to say, "extreme emergency; have the courage to try again." Expecting something good from this, they laid their shoulders, and worked their legs, and presently the boat was bowing on the gently-fluted sea.

      Now it was not that I wanted help, for I could have managed it all well enough; but I wanted witnesses. For never can I bear to seem to set at nought legality. And these men were sure, upon half-a-crown, to place the facts before the public in an honest manner. So I let them row away for the very lives of them, as if the salvage of the nation hung upon their thumbs and elbows; only I dowsed my shirt as soon as I found them getting eager. And I thought that they might as well hail me first, and slope off disappointment.

      "Hoy there! Boat ahoy! What, old Davy Llewellyn!"

      What man had a right to call me "old"? There I was as fresh as ever. And I felt it the more that the man who did it was grey on the cheeks with a very large family, and himself that vile old Sandy! Nevertheless I preserved good manners.

      "Ship your starboard oars, you lubbers. Do you want to run me down? What the devil brings you here, at this time of the morning?" Hereupon these worthy fellows dropped their oars, from wonder; until I showed them their mistake, and begged them to sheer off a little. For if I had accepted rope, such as they wished to throw me, they might have put in adverse claims, and made me pay for my own boat!

      "When a poor man has been at work all night," said I, to break off their officiousness; "while all you lazy galley-rakers were abed and snoring, can't he put his shirt to dry, without you wanting to plunder him?"

      To temper off what might appear a little rude, though wholesome, I now permitted them to see a stoneware gallon full of beer, or at least I had only had two pints out. Finding this to be the case, and being hot with rowing so rapidly to my rescue, they were well content to have some beer, and drop all further claims. And as I never can bear to be mean, I gave them the two and sixpence also.

      Sandy Macraw took all this money; and I only hope that he shared it duly; and then, as he never seemed at all to understand my contempt of him, he spoke in that dry drawl of his, which he always droned to drive me into very dreadful words, and then to keep his distance.

      "I am heartily glad, ma mon, to see the loock ye have encoontered. Never shall ye say agin that I have the advantage of ye. The boit stud me in mickle siller; but ye have grappit a boit for nort."

      I cannot write down his outlandish manner of pronouncing English; nor will I say much more about it; because he concealed his jealousy so, that I had no enjoyment of it, except when I reasoned with myself. And I need have expected nothing better from such a self-controlling rogue. But when we came to Porthcawl Point – where some shelter is from wind, and two public-houses, and one private – the whole affair was so straightforward, and the distance of my boat from shore, at time of capture, so established and so witnessed, that no steward of any manor durst even cast sheep's-eyes at her. A paper was drawn up and signed; and the two public-houses, at my expense, christened her "Old Davy." And indeed, for a little spell, I had enough to do with people, who came at all hours of the day, to drink the health of my boat and me; many of whom seemed to fail to remember really who was the one to pay. And being still in cash a little, and so generous always, I found a whole basket of whiting, and three large congers, and a lobster, disappear against chalk-marks, whereof I had no warning, and far worse, no flavour. But what I used to laugh at was, that when we explained to one another how the law lay on this question, and how the craft became legally mine, as a derelict from the Andalusia, drifting at more than a league from land, – all our folk being short and shallow in the English language, took up the word, and called my boat, all over the parish, my "Relict;" as if, in spite of the Creator's wisdom, I were dead and my wife alive!

       CHAPTER XX.

      CONFIDENTIAL INTERCOURSE

      But everybody must be tired of all this trouble about that boat. It shows what a state of things we live in, and what a meddlesome lot we are, that a good man cannot receive a gift straight into his hands from Providence, which never before rewarded him, though he said his prayers every night almost, and did his very best to cheat nobody; it proves, at least to my mind, something very rotten somewhere, when a man of blameless character must prove his right to what he finds. However, I had proved my right, and cut in Colonel Lougher's woods a larger pole than usual, because the law would guarantee me, if at all assaulted.

      And truly, after all my care to be on the right side of it, such a vile attack of law was now impending on me, that with all my study of it, and perpetual attempts to jam its helm up almost into the very eye of reason, my sails very nearly failed to draw, and left me shivering in the wind. But first for what comes foremost.

      At that particular moment all things seemed to be most satisfactory. Here was my property duly secured and most useful to me, here was a run of fish up from the Mumbles of a very superior character, here was my own reputation spread by the vigilance of the public press, so that I charged three farthings a-pound more than Sandy Mac did, and here was my cottage once more all alive with the mirth of our Bunny and Bardie. To see them playing at hide-and-seek with two chairs and a table; or "French and English," which I taught them; or "come and visit my grandmother;" or making a cat of the kettle-holder, with a pair of ears and a tail to it; or giving a noble dinner-party with cockles and oyster-shells, and buttons, and apple-peel chopped finely; or, what was even a grander thing, eating their own dinners prettily, with their dolls beside them, – scarcely any one would have believed that these little ones had no mothers.

      And yet they did not altogether seem to be forgetful, or to view the world as if there were no serious side to it. Very grave discourse was sometimes held between their bouts of play, and subjects of great depth and wonder introduced by doll's clothes. For instance: —

      "Hasn't 'a got no mama, poor Bunny, to thread 'e needle?"

      "No, my dear," I answered, for my grandchild looked stupid about it; "poor Bunny's mother is gone to heaven."

      "My mama not gone to heaven. My СКАЧАТЬ